Rolls-Royce believes time of drone cargo ships has come

​Marine innovation engineering department at Rolls-Royce has presented a draft design of an ocean-going robo-vessel that could enter service within a decade. Experts remain highly skeptical that computers could replace human instincts anytime soon.

Rolls-Royce (RR/) Holdings Plc, which started designing
autonomous cargo vessels in 2013, have presented in Bloomberg
original computer design of crewless cargo ships. The vessels
have a distinct difference from all modern ships: they lack any
deck housing whatsoever.

"The idea of a remote-controlled ship is not new, it has been
around for decades, but the difference is the technology now
exists,” announced Oskar Levander, head of marine innovation
engineering at Rolls-Royce, in an interview to the Financial
Times last December.

The explosion in development of drones operating in all
environments predetermines that robotic vehicles and vessels are
going to revolutionize transportation worldwide. And for the
world’s $375 billion shipping industry currently delivering 90
percent of world trade, that is going to be a hell of a
challenge.

The bright outlook of saving money in commercial navigation by
introducing robotic vessels keeps haunting British engineers, who
want to stake a claim on being among the pioneers of drone cargo
ships.

Rolls-Royce specialists realize that at the moment international
regulators are not ready to embrace the idea of civil sea drones,
but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so
they are initiating public debate on the issue. The company is
now pushing for organizing legal arrangements for the huge
undertaking because without agreed international regulations on
drone seafaring in place all talks about creating robotic fleet
are useless: the absence of legal market would be a barrier to
demand.

“There is no point us developing remote-controlled ships if
there isn’t a market to sell them into,” said Levander,
Rolls-Royce’s vice-president of innovation in marine engineering
and technology, to Bloomberg. “We can make it happen faster
technologically than we can on the regulatory side.”

“Now the technology is at the level where we can make this
happen, and society is moving in this direction,” Levander
said. “If we want marine to do this, now is the time to
move.”

A practical step towards robotic maritime future is going to be
made on local sea routes in the EU and the US, where lanes in
coastal waters are operating under one jurisdiction, he predicts.

“I think it will take more than 10 years before you have all
the global rules in place, but you may have a local
administration that is prepared to run [robotic ships]
sooner,” said Levander.

With the drone frenzy that engulfed America’s military and even
internet merchandise, with Google buying robot producers and
Amazon announcing drone deliveries within five years’ time
unmanned maritime is inevitable, Levander believes.

“It is happening in all the other industries so it is only
logical that it should happen in marine,” he said.

With computers generally increasing their roles in navigation and
operations, the transition to drone ships will happen gradually,
assured Levander. Container and dry-bulk carrier ships are likely
to get rid of crews first, while hazardous materials such as
flammable oil and liquefied natural gas will demand manned
steering, because of the “perception that having people on
board is safer,” he said. With time, remote-controlled ships
will become even safer to operate than manned ones today, assured
the Rolls-Royce expert.

The EU is currently funding 3.5-million-euro Maritime Unmanned
Navigation through Intelligence in Networks project (MUNIN),
similar to that of a plane’s autopilot, when one crew sets a
course for vessel and leaves the ship, whereas another crew meets
the vessel overseas close to the destination port and sails it to
the pier.

Drone skeptics

The economies of the robotic cargo vessels are obvious: no crew
costs (average $3,299 a day, or about 44 percent of total
operating expenses for a large freighter, according to Moore
Stephens LLP, quoted by Bloomberg), no life-support system
expenses, more space for cargo in absence of a bridge, control
cabin and staterooms. Apart from giving additional space for
cargo, such ships would use 15 percent less fuel, according to
Bloomberg.

But potential investment needed to make ships steer themselves to
destination might be high enough to consider the idea financially
unattractive.

“I don’t think personally that there’s a huge cost-benefit in
unmanned ships today, but technologically it’s possible,”
said Tor Svensen, chief executive officer of maritime for DNV GL,
the largest company certifying vessels for safety standards, in
early February. “My prediction is that it’s not coming in the
foreseeable future.”

The UK-based International Association of Classification
Societies so far hasn’t developed unified rules for unmanned
vessels operation.

“Can you imagine what it would be like with an unmanned
vessel with cargo on board trading on the open seas? You get in
enough trouble with crew on board,” the organization’s
secretary Derek Hodgson told Bloomberg in early January.
“There are an enormous number of hoops for it to go through
before it even got onto the drawing board.”

The London-based International Chamber of Shipping confirmed that
drone ships are illegal under current international conventions.
The chamber, representing over 80 percent of the global fleet,
does not considering the issue serious at this point, shared
spokesman Simon Bennett earlier in February.

“I’m not very much of a fan and think this is a long way
off,” said Peter Hinchliffe, secretary-general of the
International Chamber of Shipping.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency that
has overseen global shipping for almost 70 years, so far hasn’t
received any proposals on unmanned or remote-controlled ships,
spokeswoman Natasha Brown confirmed in an email. The IMO’s
regulations apply to any vessel exceeding 500 gross tons,
battleships and fishing boats excluded.

Without complying with IMO regulations, no robotic ships would be
considered seaworthy and eligible for insurance, stressed Andrew
Bardot, secretary and executive officer of the London-based
International Group of P&I Clubs, representing 90 percent of
the world fleet.

Besides legal obstacles, there is a human factor as well as there
are well over a million seafarers worldwide.

The International Transport Workers’ Federation, representing
about 600,000 world’s skilled maritime specialists strictly
oppose the innovation, warning of the “dangers posed to the
environment by unmanned vessels.”

“It cannot and will never replace the eyes, ears and thought
processes of professional seafarers,” maintained Dave
Heindel, chairman of the ITF’s seafarers’ section in London, in
an emailed statement.

While Rolls-Royce maintains that unmanned ships are going to be
more resistant to pirate attacks because there will be “no
crew to take hostage,” others believe the drone ships will
see piracy flourish, because any remotely-controlled mechanism
could be hijacked or manipulated, just like the American spy
drone RQ-170 Sentinel safely grounded by Iranian military in 2011.

“Take the crews off a ship, and I will become a pirate,”
wrote user rubadubdoobie in comments on the Bloomberg website.

“There are billions of dollars aboard nearly all of these
ships. An unguarded ship, few security measures, billions of
dollars as a sitting duck.... only a fool would NOT become a
pirate, if there was literally no one to stop you or even ID
you,” wrote rubadubdoobie, adding that “These ships
would be an unguarded ATM sitting in the middle of the
ocean.”